Archives: March 2009

Editorial...

Old habits die hard

How many people have ever tried to teach an old dog a new trick? In my experience a dog would do anything for a nice bit of biscuit, but the point of the saying remains true: old habits die hard.

We often think of habits as bad things. The classic for me is eating pretty unhealthily, so much so that I have a familial like relationship with the staff of most of the curry houses in Watford. But we can also have habits that aren’t so negative. Things we do because we’ve always done them. Stuff we’ve grown up with, that we don’t question and just do.

It’s these habits that are harder to identify and if we are not careful we can treat following Jesus a bit like an unquestioned habit. Now, don’t get me wrong, developing good habits and routines around our faith are a key way to continually connect with God, but I’ve been thinking about how Jesus spoke to the ruling religious people of his day. You might know the story: Jesus who is chilling with his homies, gets invited round to some important Jewish chaps house  and ignores the custom of not washing before the meal. At this point, the host seems a bit put out and Jesus starts shouting about the hypocrisy of habitual religious activity (Luke 11v37ff).

Jesus hated it when the Pharisees, who seemed to be so devoted to God in the way they lived their lives, missed the point. They gave their money and possessions out of habit and they went to services out of a desire to be recognised, missing the fact that God doesn’t want blind obedience, he wants relationship.

He wants our habits (like giving) to be considered, and to come at a cost to us. He wants us to choose to give, to go to church and to read the Bible, not because it’s the ‘Christian thing to do’ but because we’ve encountered him and want to commit to following him. We give because we know that giving stuff away challenges us to trust him more.  We go to church because we know that going to church encourages us to worship him more. And we read the Bible because we know that reading the Bible helps us to know and recognise him more.

You might have been doing these things since you were a kid. Don’t panic.  They are good things. Without them we’d be lost as followers of Jesus. But if we let these things become more about habit and blind obedience than about putting God first and doing them because we want to know and grow in our relationship with Jesus, we just end up in a religious mess. We end up as Pharisees. We end up as old dogs. And that’s the challenge, to not forget the point… getting closer to Jesus.

Well that’s that. This month we have a few fantastic articles for you. Mike and Andy take us through some Biblical stuff on worship and God’s presence, Aware highlights the stories of three remarkable world changing people, Momentum has a reflection on loss, Reality connects Martin Luther King Jr with life in South London and this month’s Bible Study continues our Bible overview, taking you from the time of King David to the Exile!

Dan
editor@soulsurvivor.com